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Continuing on from my previous family heirloom post, below is a photo of another family heirloom, or rather pair of family heirlooms. They are somewhat less practical that the shoe brush last time, in fact they serve no useful purpose other than to illustrate a part of my grandad’s army life.

The story (told to me by my father) goes that these two pieces of rock were pieces of the Rock of Gibraltar brought back from Gibraltar by my grandad who had been stationed out there whilst serving with the Royal Engineers during the Second World War.

Whilst I am pretty certain that he served in Gibraltar (and could confirm that with his service record), I have no way of knowing whether these are in fact bits of the Rock, unless I can find a geologist with some way of analysing them.

However I am quite happy to accept the story that these were souvenirs of his time spent in Gibraltar and have no reason to doubt it.

Very interesting web site! I come from Gibraltar and I know The Rock pretty well, I have also worked in the tunnels and seen many of the natural caves. The crystalized rock on the right definitely looks as if it came from one of the natural caves. The one on the left also looks like part of a stalactite, stalagmite and part rock formation. Both rocks most definitely appear to be from Gibraltar.